Than!ks

Today, I finally achieved my lifetime dream of petting a cow. Actually, it was really only a 2 day dream, and I'm not completely certain that I haven't petted a cow at some other point in my past, but I realized a dream of some sort, and that's what counts. The following is pictorial evidence.
This did not last long before she decided to show me exactly how she felt about me petting her by eliminating a large amount of waste on her tail. I tried to pet her again, but, she had managed to protect herself by swatting herself on either side, leaving a manure barrier between me and fantastic cow petting. This made me say, "Clever move, my bovine opponent." (or wait, maybe it was more like "Ew...there's manure everywhere." but who really knows...except for Shamus and Lilliput's sister Angelica...and their dog Tobias...and the video of the entire event that Shamus was taking. But other than that, no one knows what actually transpired.) and look for something else to pet. Unfortunately, the other cows were reportedly more likely to destroy me, so my only response at this point was this:
Note that I'm running with my head down, because when running from bloodthirsty cows, one should always watch for cow pies, or else live to regret it. You can't say you don't learn valuable life lessons from reading this blog.

Later, we had a lovely game of croquet, far away from the cow pies. Since most of my croquet knowledge has come from Alice in Wonderland, I had trouble figuring out how one is supposed to play without flamingos and hedgehogs. We seemed to work it out though, and in the 3rd game, I came in second place by default when everyone else decided they didn't want to play for second place, so one might say I'm a croquet master of sorts.

I logged onto Facebook today and it said "Sharon, you can now use Facebook to send thanks." Which made me think, "Crap, I've clearly been thanking people illicitly through Facebook for years." In fact, the majority of times I send messages on Facebook or e-mail, I like to try to slip in a request, just so that I'll have something to thank them for, because I have an awful time choosing a good sign-off. I do "Cheers" sometimes, and "Regards" can be good when you really don't know someone, or want to give it a little chill at the end, but really there's nothing like a good "Thanks" to end a message. Anyways, I was curious about this whole Facebook thanks thing, so I clicked on it, and all that happened was a new message opened with the subject line: "Thanks!" I'm luckly I had them to do this for me, because, had I done it myself, I would have had no idea where to place the exclamation point for maximum effect, and my person would have been left feeling completely unthanked. Th!ank you Facebook for once again enriching my life.

Char-Char (my 6 month old niece) came over to help me finish my blog. She's much better with a computer than I am, and managed to open some sort of magical code box and then reset my internet privacy settings. I would have let her do more, since she seemed to really know what was going on, but when she started drooling on the "R" key, I realized it might be time for a computer break. Although, I'm not certain that she didn't just know something more than me. Like that drooling on the "R" key will reprogram your computer to start dispensing delicious milkshakes, or that liberal use of words starting in "R" will help make a blog really rewarding for readers, as well as (w)riters. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr (that's me rolling an "R" to close off this post, in case you're confused, but I'll do it again now for effect). Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Can one quack lugubriously?

After last night's post I was talking to my brother, Shamus Van Nostrum, and he told me he was just waiting for me to slip up and miss a blog post, and then, kablamo! (he didn't actually say kablamo!, but I assume he would have, had he thought to at the time). So, my resolve to post everyday has been further strengthened, which is why I'm starting this one at 5:30am, because I'm not sure when today I might have time to actually write one. I figure, if nothing else, I have this paragraph, which is already pretty much awesome, because of the 2 instances of the word kablamo! (wait...3).

Oh, I also have a picture. Remember how I don't know how to work my cellphone? Well, in one of my many attempts to share the picture of my magic mug with the world, I tried to e-mail it to myself. Having never e-mailed from my cell, when it didn't arrive, I just assumed I'd messaged a random Sharon with my mug picture and would never see it again. But, through the magic of internet it arrived later last night, which makes me kind of wonder where it was hanging out for those hours in between. So, now I can share a slightly better fuzzy picture of my mug teetering precariously off my bottom shelf. As you look at it, remember that this is how it landed after falling off my desk and bouncing off the floor, but also be careful not to let it blow your mind.

So, this part of the post is no longer 5am, in case you're wondering. This is the midafternoon, "Hey, let's blog while I drink my coffee to keep me up for the rest of the day," part of the blog.

I spent my day at a school teaching small humans how to eat healthy. At the beginning of the day, I was given the all important job of helping them cook, of which the most important task was ensuring that no little fingers were lost, and if that was unavoidable, then to at least ensure they were not eaten. I'm happy to say that, despite little training, I was successful.

It had been a long time since I'd been in an elementary school. I was surprised to hear that they listen to the same a cappella recording of "O Canada" at the beginning of the school day as we did approximately 2 decades ago. I'm not sure what exactly it is about this particular recording that they think will engage the nationalistic spirit of our youngest citizens, but it still doesn't quite do it for me. Except, of course, for the addition of a punctuated "Ca-na-da" at the end, which is helpful to remind me which country it is I've been singing about for the last minute and a half ("What? I thought we were singing about Grenada. But that Canada thing does make the north reference easier to understand.")

They also had a list of synonyms for the word "sad" on the wall. No "happy", no "angry", just "sad". As a daydreamer who throughout a year in a classroom would read anything posted on the wall about 10000x on average (are you aware that "chemists do it in tubes"?), I have to imagine that an entire list of words meaning depression could really mess up a 12 year old's psyche. I'm not sure if the focus on improving the children's ability to express sadness was driven by a need to more accurately prescribe antidepressants, or whether the high schools had asked them to better prepare them so that their emo poems might be less repetitive to mark.

Example:

Pre-Project Sad Vocabulary:

I'm so sad.
No one understands me.
That makes me sad.

Post-Project Sad Vocabulary:

I'm so devastatingly miserable.
No one understands me.
That makes me lugubrious.

Forgive me if I misused the word lugubrious, not having been a part of Project Sad Vocabulary I've never been fully trained in the proper way to use it in a sentence. But, I was part of: Project When People Come to Farms They're Oinking at Cows and Quacking at Horses, We Seriously Need to Fix That. It has served me well when conferring with barnyard animals in my day to day life.

God wants me to drink coffee Q.E.D.

I don't know if I've mentioned this, but blogging everyday is not easy, especially while juggling a life full of random hurdles. But, I'm a stubborn person, and I said I would write everyday, so that is what I shall do.

An example of my persistence: when I was in grade 4, a teacher told us a story about a 6th grader trying (and failing) to read the unabridged version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and said no 6th grader could ever get through the book. So I, always one for a challenge, found a copy of it and started reading, determined to prove that I could do in grade 4 what no 6th grader could handle. I read about 12 pages, and all I can remember was that it was about some sort of expedition or something...I don't really know. All I do know is that I thought "Where the hell is my monster?" and put it down forever. Oh, wait, that's not a good example of my persistence.

Actually, it's strange that I was upset about the lack of monster, considering this was only a few years before I couldn't sleep for fear of Raptors eating me in the night and shortly after the phase in which I would hide in terror when my brothers put on the soundtrack from Ghostbusters 2 (The song "(Your love keeps lifting me) Higher and Higher" caused pretty severe panic attacks for a disturbingly long time after that movie). I'm lucky the beginning of that book was so excruciating, because I probably wouldn't have slept for most of my childhood if I managed to get to the monster.

A better example of my persistence would be the day that I decided I needed a new bookshelf right away, so I walked to Canadian Tire in a snowstorm to purchase one. When I'd found one, I thought, "This isn't too heavy, and the walk isn't so far...I think I can do this." I was a thousand kinds of wrong. Actually, that's a lie, because I did eventually make it, so, I was at least one kind of right. But, regardless, it was pretty ridiculous.

I hadn't reached the corner outside the store before my arms felt like they were on fire. As I mentioned, there was a snowstorm at the time, but despite the very real potential for frostbite, I have never been more certain that I was about to spontaneously combust than I was on that walk. Because of this, I had to stop approximately every 5 meters to set it down in the snow...until about halfway through the trip, when I realized that the box had disintegrated on the bottom and everything was falling out. So I had to flip it over, and continue in 5 meter spurts, until it was clear that the other side was going to lose it soon.

This was the point where I nearly fell into the fetal position crying on the side of Sheppard Avenue, which is not the cleanest of street sides. The one reason I didn't is I realized that the box would completely break and all the pain and suffering would be in vain. So I started running. Well, more like rapid waddling, but the point is, I had come too far, and I was going to get that MF home if it was the last thing I did (such a statement felt quite real at this point because I was fairly certain death was coming soon, due to the aforementioned combustion). Long story short, I made it (that's right, it's an actual for real story about persistence...and you totally thought I was bluffing again). I ended up temporarily leaving it outside, hoping that any thief that might wander by would assume it was garbage. I was lucky that it would be hard not to mistake it for garbage by the time I got home. Now I have a beautiful shelf with slightly watermarked edges. Yay persistence.

Thinking of that shelf, I'm glad that I managed it that day, because it was a key player in the closest experience I've ever had to magic. I love coffee. But that is not the magic of the story, just an important thing to note. Ever since I started drinking coffee, I've had my latte mug. I don't know where it came from, but when I moved out of my first apartment, it was one of the random leftover dishes that seemed to belong to no one, so it ended up belonging to me. Since then, it has gotten me through every late night paper, every exam period and the majority of my post-exam hangovers. So, you can imagine the pain it would bring me if I were to break it one day.

I think it's obvious that this story begins with me dropping my all important latte mug. Actually, I knocked it off my desk. Then I tensed every muscle of my body as it managed to bounce off the floor, flip over and land upright teetering on the edge of my shelf. The statistical odds of this happening have not been calculated, as far as I know, but I'm going to guestimate that it's 1 in eleventeenzillion. Below is a diagram of the fall and a picture of the mug after it landed.


Yes, I'm aware that my mug picture is more sketchy than that photo of Bigfoot, but at the time I only had my cell phone camera, which is not that great to start out. To make matters worse, I don't actually know how to get photos from my phone to my computer, so I ended up using my webcam to take a picture of the picture, which was difficult, because the phone kept on reflecting my computer screen, so I had to carefully turn off the screen with my mouse hovering over the capture picture button, but if it took me too long, my cellphone display would shut off and it would all be for naught. The point is, stop creating magic mug conspiracy stories and start spending more time teaching me how to work basic technology.